Traditionally, a wide range of vibrating and other separating screen assemblies are known in the art and are used for screening/separating or grading of minerals in the mining and quarrying industries. Various designs and constructions of both screen panels and fixing arrangements are well known in the art.
The materials are caused to run or flow over the vibrating screen deck. The screen deck includes a number of screen panels that are put together and placed on the supporting frame. Varieties of screening surfaces are available for the industrial vibrating screens. The choice of screening surface for a particular duty mostly depends on the aperture required and the nature of the work. To achieve a high degree of performance of a screening machine the following criterion are very important selection of size and shape of apertures the proportion of open area the material properties of the screening surface, and flexibility of the screen surface.
The surface of the screening panel system for ore screening decks that is now widely used by the mining industry, is usually manufactured from steel, rubber, or polyurethane which replaced the earlier screening cloths and large wire screening frames both in respect of quality and productivity. A mere classification is made based on how they are fixed to the screen. The screen panels are prone to wear due to the nature of screening process and require replacement at regular intervals. This is disadvantageous from a maintenance point of view as the existing conventional fixing arrangement usually have individual elements that need to be removed and subsequently replaced, thus making the replacement process difficult, labour intensive and time consuming.
Such maintenance operations as stated in the preceding paragraph also cause hindrance to the screening operation. This sort of maintenance operations lead to loss of the machine's production capacity. Such losses need to be kept at a minimum.
There has thus been a persistent need to design a suitable fixing arrangement or fastener system that can be used in conjunction with suitable screen panel for its application in mining and quarrying industries so that the replacement process is simple, require less human intervention and also less time consuming hence reducing the downtime of the plant.
The present invention meets the aforesaid long felt need.
All through out the specification including the claims, the words “screen panel”, “screen deck” “adapter bar”, “fixing rail”, “male insert”, “female groove”, “fixing means”, “screening apparatus”, “base section”, “support”, “fastening device” and so on are to be interpreted in the broadest sense of the respective terms and includes all similar items in the field known by other terms, as may be clear to persons skilled in the art. Restriction/limitation, if any, referred to in the specification, is solely by way of example and understanding the present invention.